Our key verse for today’s devotional tells the story of the entire chapter, Genesis 9. Chapter nine is “Noah after the flood”, as you go through the first twelve chapters of Genesis. The chapter opens with God speaking to Noah, after the flood, telling him and his three sons, and their wives, to be “fruitful and re-people the Earth”.

The last two verses of Genesis 9, verse 28 and 29, tell us that after the flood Noah lived 350 years, making his total life 950 years long. This means that Noah was still alive when Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees. I’m sure that these two very important personalities of Bible history met and spent time talking about before and after the flood.

I say that I’m sure, however, I do not have Biblical proof. We will see in Genesis 10 and 11 that Nimrod built a “great city”, Babylon, within miles of Ur. It is logical that Abraham would have wanted to talk with one of eight souls that lived on both sides of the flood.

The command that God gave Noah, to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”, was how the Lord planned to fill the earth with people and to establish the nations of the world, which we’ll look at when we come to Genesis 10.

Genesis 9:6 is the passage that records the establishment of “human government”. You will recognize “capital punishment” in verse 6, which is the highest function of all of human government. God brought “human government” into existence for the purpose of directing all of humankind through history.

There is much more that you will learn from your reading of Genesis 9 for our devotional today, please read the entire chapter. As you read the last two verses you notice that Noah lived after the flood for 350 years and I would suggest that he lived with his great grandson Nimrod in Babylon.

When we get to Genesis 10 and 11 we’ll see this to be the case. What is interesting to me is that Matthew 24:37 says, “as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the time of the coming of Jesus, back to earth”. In the days of Noah, after the flood, the focus of the world was Babylon, in modern-day Iraq.

Thus, in the days of the coming of the Lord the world will be focused on Babylon, modern-day Iraq, Revelation 18. I’ll spend time developing this when we come to our devotional time in Revelation 18. Suffice to say, we are at that time in history when the world will be relying on the activities of Babylon.

To the above I want to add that before all of the prophecies found in the Bible are fulfilled the Rapture will take place and those of us who are saved will go to join Jesus in the heavens.

I realize that the current events of our present time seem to be telling us that God’s prophetic scenario found in the Bible will all be fulfilled in the near future. Remember, the Rapture could happen at any moment, even today.

PRAYER THOT: Thank you for the fact that the Rapture will happen, and that it could happen at any moment. Help me Lord to live in light of this truth in my daily walk.